53 pages • 1 hour read
Walter J. OngOrality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2: “The Modern Discovery of Primary Oral Cultures”
Chapter 2, Section 1 Summary: “Early Awareness of Oral Tradition”
Some academic attention had been paid to oral cultures even prior to the modern awareness of orality resulting from Milman Parry’s (1902-1935) work. For instance, although many early linguists resisted making a formal distinction between written and spoken language, the influential Prague Linguistic Circle (1928-1939) were cognizant of the significant differences. In literature, various scholars from ancient, medieval, and Renaissance eras all drew from oral culture and proverbs in their written works. Also the Romantic Movement of the 18th century placed particular value on folk cultures and the oral cultures of the distant past. By the 20th century, many scholars disputed the prior notion that oral folk culture was merely a remnant of an older, superior literary culture.
Chapter 2, Section 2 Summary: “The Homeric Question”
For the past two millennia, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey have been widely touted as the best secular poems in Western culture. Dubbed ‘The Homeric Question’ by 19th century scholars, debate over the identity of Homer, the authorship of the poems attributed to him, and their historicity provides a neat insight into shifting cultural attitudes toward orality through the ages. Homer’s work has consistently been touted as superior to the contemporary poetry of each successive period, but within academic circles this adulation has always been tinged with unease and doubt as to the work’s origins. In the 19th century, Homeric studies were dominated by the ‘Analysts’ who believed that extant texts of the Iliad and Odyssey were actually compilations of the work of many different poets rather than one single Homer. These Analysts were succeeded by the ‘Unitarians’ who contrastingly believed the poems to be the work of one man. Parry was revolutionary to Homeric Studies as the first modern scholar to eschew the blind spots and inhibitions of a literate mind to accurately see and fully understand the poetry of Homer as an oral artform.
Chapter 2, Section 3 Summary: “Milman Parry’s Discovery”
Ong states that Parry was a trailblazer who pioneered a revolutionary understanding of Homeric poetry. He showed that oral poetry is a very different artform to the poetry of a literate culture and that the distinctive characteristics of Homeric poetry were conditioned by the necessity of economy in oral composition. Homeric poetry was not composed in advance or memorized verbatim, instead it was recomposed anew and differed slightly with each telling. The poet stitched together set expressions and formulas developed over generations prior, choosing from a mental bank of words, forms, and epithets to suit the metrical needs of the hexameter form. Most oral poetry worldwide uses formula “essential ideas” in predictable groupings around standardized themes to refer generically to repeated set elements. Unlike in written poetry, unique or original modes of expression are not valued highly in oral poetry; rather, skill is shown through the aptness and grace with which the poet recombines cliches to suit the audience and circumstances of each recitation. All early writing mimics the oral style of the language and only gradually develops a distinct literary style. The English language shed the influence of its oral style during the Romantic Movement, and many other modern languages have yet to do so.
David Bynum (1936-2021) and Eric Havelock (1903-1988) expounded on the prevalent use of formulas in narrative organization in oral cultures, as well as in the thought patterns of primary oral people. Prior to the advent of literacy, repetition and patterns were characteristic of oral wisdom and administrative excellence and functioned as key mnemonics to ensure the continuation of knowledge. Only by Plato’s time did the orality-conditioned modes of formulaic thought begin to give way to more abstract and novel thinking under the influence of widespread internalized literacy and an alphabetic script. Ancient Greek society was therefore a turning point in Western history, as is reflected in Plato’s own conflict over the respective functions and value of writing and oral poetry.
Chapter 2, Section 4 Summary: “Consequent and Related Work”
Much of Parry’s work has since been refined or elaborated upon, but its core revolutionary principles and implications remain foundational—and indeed all but uncontested—elements of modern Homeric studies. According to Ong, Havelock and Albert Lord (1912-1991) contributed the most meaningful continuation to Parry’s work in their analyses of the links between literacy and philosophy in ancient Greece, and their fieldwork exploring contemporary Serbo-Croatian oral poetry. Attention has been paid to these revelations on orality and literacy in relevant spheres of some related disciplines, such as anthropology, although others like neurophysiology have yet to take note.
Chapter 2 Analysis
This chapter functions as an overview and review of the extant literature on the topic of orality. Ong claims that the most influential contribution was made by Parry in his analyses of the poetry of Homer. Ong pays detailed attention to the nuances and influences of Parry’s work, making clear the extent to which current orality studies is indebted to his contributions. It is noteworthy that Parry’s field of interest was Homeric Studies, given that his work on orality is of potential interest across such a broad range of subject areas. As Ong describes, the poetry of Homer had been exhaustively studied, analysed, and discussed for over two millennia before Parry weighed in. The fact that this field was still fecund enough to spark such ground-breaking research in the 20th century suggests that there is wealth of literary, cultural, and linguistic information available in the Iliad and Odyssey. These epic poems are of additional value to Ong and the reader of Orality and Literacy. The fact that Homer’s works have been the subject of such intense and passionate scrutiny over such a long period of time means that the historiography of the field of Homeric Studies itself provides a meta insight into the attitudes and resources of mainstream academia.
Ong also dedicates significant attention to the work of Lord and Havelock in this and later chapters. He discusses in some significant depth the findings of their fieldwork with oral poets of the Balkan region. This research remains a valuable resource decades after the publication of Ong’s book because it is one of the few detailed extant records of primary oral culture and narratives made using modern equipment and linguistic techniques. The ongoing—near total—loss of primary oral cultures has made it very unlikely future researchers will be able to procure such valuable findings. This is especially true of Europe given its high levels of literacy in the modern era.
Other regions have equally valid oral narrative traditions, and many regions of Papua New Guinea and the Pacific have isolated linguistic communities with no established written form of language. Through the course of the book, Ong only mentions such languages and literary traditions outside of his own field of expertise in passing. So, although Ong lists several disciplines that may benefit from the incorporation of orality-literacy studies, his silence on other perspectives and subtopics is equally telling of the fields that may most benefit from future focus.
